Swann Dive
by StrangeLittleSwirl
Summary: Elizabeth dove before Will could stop her. Gibbs managed to grit out “Calm down, boy!” as the blacksmith tried to follow her over. He fought back. “For God’s sake, she doesn’t know how to swim!” he screamed. DMC Spoilers. JE


**Swanndive**

A horribly long and quickly written one-shot by **Rose with Thorns**

**Disclaimer:**If you thought I owned any bit of the Pirates, would I really be wasting my time writing this stuff?

* * *

Will climbed over the side of the ship first, water logged and panting. Elizabeth could hear Jack below, his voice exhausted and barely holding on to the rope. She rushed towards both of them.

It was the compass, wielded by Elizabeth and the ship captained by Barbarossa that led to this place of shadows and fog and figures in shadows. Smoke curled overhead, and in the very distance, one could just make out where the normal Caribbean-blue sky had ended and the London-murky grey had started. Will had not spoken to her much. They had opposite shifts, by his request.

Thank goodness there had never been a ring, she'd thought. Will would never have had the heart to ask for it back.

Elizabeth gave Will a hearty tug and he toppled over the deck, gasping and crying at the same time. The others looked at one another guiltily. Obviously, he had not saved his father. She swallowed the pit of sadness and forged on.

"Everything alright?" Gibbs called to Jack, still hanging over the side. She leaned over impatiently, barely able to determine where he was but for the faint glimmer of some gem on his person and his eyes. And then it came.

At first, she assumed it was some mist moving along the water's edge, but then it darkened. It took shape. A coil of fear started in her stomach. She leaned over, precariously.

"Jack, take my hand," she cried, stricken. The glimmers moved, and she assumed his head had jerked back.

"Is that Liz?" he rasped. "It's as dark as night down he-"

Perhaps it was whatever that shape was, or perhaps he lost his balance, she'd never know, but Jack lost his grip on the slime-covered rope and toppled down into the dim waters below.

"Jack!" she screamed, scrambling to stand on the ledge. Will, lying on the deck still trying to catch his breath and explain what had happened, started to try to get up, frenzied.

In a moment of rational thought, she would have realized her next action could have led to her death; she did not know what was in the water, nor could she determine exactly how deep the waters were. Elizabeth dove before Will could stop her.

Gibbs managed to grit out "Calm down, boy!" as the blacksmith tried to follow her over. He fought back.

"For God's sake, she doesn't know how to swim!" he screamed.

_

* * *

_

_Elizabeth sputtered as Jack helped her break the surface of the water. Behind them, they could hear the laughter of Barbarossa's men. Ahead of them was the silence of the forsaken island._

"_Come on, love. This time you don't even have that ruddy dress on," he rumbled next to her, paddling with one arm while keeping her above water in some strange maneuver that only he could perform. Elizabeth tried to look cross. However, when one has nearly drowned-again-and has been saved by a pirate-again, it is quite difficult._

"_Be that as it may, Mr. Sparrow"-she ignored his half hearted mutter of '_Captain_ Jack Sparrow'-"I do not know how to properly swim."_

"_Well how the hell do you think you'll ever survive on a ship?"_

_After their spat (and before the rum set in), he showed her how to swim, with a gentle voice and a delicate hand at her back as she floated on the surface. She ignored his gaze down at her. She tried to ignore the fact she was abandoned on an island with a strange man she barely knew while Will was in danger. _

_And the horrible, guilt-causing thing was that it worked temporarily._

* * *

Elizabeth opened her eyes. Below water, things seemed much clearer. Moonlight (though it was really day before they entered the area) filtered into beams that illuminated the ocean floor below her. She could make out the barnacles on the underside of the ship above. Had it been the Black Pearl, Jack would have had someone diving down to scrape those off.

She looked around, knowing she couldn't stay down for long.

He was floating nearby. The hair that usually was in disarray and almost dread-locked floated around his face like some sort of twisted dark version of a halo, delicate and black. His eyes were closed.

There was no sign of that shadow. With a furious kick, she started towards him, and only felt safe when she had an arm around him.

Her lungs were starting to burn, screaming for air and trying to spasm, to make her inhale. As she awkwardly started towards the surface, she felt it. The black thing was back, behind her, and it only caused her to move faster.

For an instant, she thought she wouldn't make it, that she and Jack were going to die in each other's arms in this Hell (and it could have possibly have been that). But then she remembered something.

"_You'll head up, eventually,"_ he'd said after she had thrashed her way upward that day. _"Dead or alive, If you don't have a cannonball strapped to your ankles, up is where you're going to go."_

And then, with his words in her head and his weight at her side, she pushed the last few kicks.

She'd never inhaled as desperately as she did then, Jack's head bobbing backwards next to her.

"Gibbs!" the young woman finally managed, adrenaline starting to wear off. Pulling him up unconscious was out of the question with her dwindling strength. "Drop the lifeboat!"

'It' broke the water's skin a small distance away from her. The skin on the top of its head was slick, like the dolphins that had danced in Pearl's wake, but seemed to be much more hideous. She pulled Jack closer to her, keeping his head above the water and resting her cheek on him. The governor's daughter felt some ridiculous need to challenge it.

"I won't give him up," she said firmly. Above she could her them scrambling to lower the lifeboat. "I've come all this way to find him, I've given so much, I-"

It continued to stare at her, and she stared back. Elizabeth was relieved to hear Jack breathe next to her. That was a sound she'd never appreciated until then. Impulsively she kissed his clammy cheek. "I-I love him."

'It' tilted its head, and she licked her lips nervously. Her small dagger was still on the deck, and she couldn't lower her hand to search Jack for a weapon, or his head would lull forward. She held him closer, fiercely aware now of the swell in her heart for the man in her arms. Elizabeth had come this far, she would not lose him to whatever this thing was.

It blinked-how she wasn't quite sure-and then seemed pleased with her response. The lifeboat hit the water a short distance from her as she chanted an exhausted 'thank you' to 'it's disappearing back.

With some small reserve of strength she didn't know she had, she pushed him into the lifeboat and then climbed in next to him, breathless. Above they started to pull them back up.

She cried then, as she crawled over to him and held him to her, hearing his breathing and seeing him and knowing that perhaps he'd be fine, in a basic sort of way. Elizabeth hadn't shed a tear since Tia Dalma's. Now she made up for it.

When the others finally got the lifeboat back up, they found her positively bawling, clinging to Jack Sparrow. It wasn't until Jack himself had regained consciousness and told her he couldn't breathe from her death-grip on him that she finally let go.

Hours later, as Barbarossa steered them back to safer seas, Will finally talked to her. Jack was dozing with his back against a rum barrel and his head in Elizabeth's lap; the woman stroked at his hair, content to hum some little song Will had heard Jack sing before, and now realized she'd taught him. Every now and then her melody was interrupted by the clink of some of the trinkets in his hair. Will Turner took a seat across from them. For once, she did not feel guilty, and seemed only confident she knew where the conversation was going.

"Elizabeth," he finally managed quietly after a time. She looked up, smiling sadly.

"I know, Will. And I am sorry." The others were clumped on the other side of the deck, pretending to not notice that Elizabeth was talking seriously with her fiancé or that Jack was in her lap. She pretended not to notice as well. "I think there was a time that-maybe-if things hadn't happened as they did-"

Will shook his head, his shoulders settling before he met her gaze as if coming to terms with what came next. "No. You wouldn't have been happy. You'd be a blacksmith's wife and have the children and always wonder if you had made the right choice." His voice was thick, and he swallowed. "That storm was a sign. I knew it and you knew it."

Neither spoke for a time, only listened to the water rushing past them in a whisper that reminded her of satin skirting along the floor-or perhaps it was that satin along the floor had always reminded her of the ocean.

"I didn't know you could swim," Will said, breaking the silence.

"Jack taught me," Elizabeth said simply. This caused Will to smile. The same one she'd had before.

"When we return," he started but then seemed to change his mind, "if we return…I do not expect you to-what I mean to say is that-"

For a moment, she glimpsed the little boy who stuttered and could barely see through his mop of curly brown hair. She could hear the echoes of their laughter as they cried out 'Let's play pirates!' in some little cave in Port Royal. And then it was gone.

Will exhaled heavily. "You love him, Elizabeth. I can see it plain as day, now. And no doubt you'd have jumped off the side to save him even if you did _not_ know how to swim. I want you to be happy, Elizabeth. First and foremost. As a friend I want that for you. Consider the engagement broken."

Elizabeth swallowed, trying to speak but finding herself unable to. Will seemed to notice and shook his head, no need for the thanks she was trying to verbalize. He stood and kissed her softly on the head, the way a brother would.

"I wish you both happiness, Elizabeth. All the happiness in the world. And he better treat you right."

With that, he was gone, walking back to the group.

"Who says that I won't?" Jack asked, perfectly awake and eyeing the woman above him. She tugged lightly on his hair.

"You were awake that entire time weren't you?" He struggled to sit upright and looked at her with twinkling eyes. There was something solemn behind the glitter, though. The past month's events had changed him-or perhaps they only brought to the surface a part of him that had always existed. She'd live an entire lifetime to find out if she had to, and to show him she really _was_ sorry about what she'd done.

"Pirate," he said in a way of explanation, happily, and Elizabeth could only sigh and settle back into _his_ embrace as he drew her up against his chest. He was quiet as he looked out at the waters, and Elizabeth looked up at him.

"I'm not a gentleman, Lizzie," he said, still not meeting her gaze. "I've never been to a tea party or church service-well, I've _been_ to a church service but I was sort of actually _leading_ it you see and-"

Another time, another place for that story. "I'm not much of a lady, anyway," she replied. Long ago her hands had become so calloused that they snagged fine satin. She was quite thoroughly brown and muscles had started to grow in her arms. She took the opportunity to wind them around his waist. "And I fought for this."

He looked down at her, confused at first but then seeming to understand as she eyed him. "I fought _the devil_ for this."

He knew, obviously. She could tell from the fear that passed through his eyes. Then, he continued on with what he was saying. "But I will _try_. I'm a cad and a slimy black-heart and all sorts of horrible things."

"And I chained you to a ship to die. Tell everyone else that lovely little description," she airily replied. "But _I_ know that's not really you. I've said it before and I meant it: you're a good man-and I love you."

That seemed to settle things, since Jack became quiet again.

He tapped her foot with his grimy ones. "So, do you know where you can find the Captain of this here boat? I do believe you and I have something that needs to be done."

Elizabeth grinned.


End file.
